


home

by missdulcerosea



Category: Arthurian Mythology
Genre: Fix-It, Fluff and Angst, Implied/Referenced Sex, M/M, and very fade to black and not graphic at all, but its consensual, but just a heads up just in case
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-09
Updated: 2019-12-09
Packaged: 2021-02-25 04:46:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21730273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/missdulcerosea/pseuds/missdulcerosea
Summary: (Fix fic to "we can survive on dreams, can't we?" - the fic on my old ao3 account.)Galahad has failed the Grail quest and returns to Camelot. Recovery may not be linear, but if he tries hard enough he and Percival can slowly make the climb.
Relationships: Galahad/Percival (Arthurian)
Kudos: 6





	home

He wishes he could sleep forever.

If Galahad could close his eyes and not dream about a thing—empty his mind of thoughts of the Grail and his father and of everything—he would. But he knows that’s not within his reach, so he stays awake and watches the world tilt around him. He is aware of every little bit of movement, andd the world spinning beneath his feet makes him wonder what would happen if he lost his balance and fell again.

You’re stumbling, he wants to scream at himself, you’re falling, you’re tripping, you’ve failed. Why are you still walking? Why do you still wake up?

But he keeps walking onward even though he has no reason to.

The sun is warm on Galahad’s face, the chirping of birds buzzing around him. His eyes are shut and if he tries to open them he is met with the sting of sleeping grit in the corners of his eyes and a blurry world swirling around him. Then he remembers his spectacles dashed to bits on the floor and closes his eyes again.

Percival’s heart beat is loud and rhythmic in his ears. It is a constant in a place that changes, and while he wishes he could at least stumble back to the altar and clutch his fingers around the Grail (he was so close, so close, but then it vanished) he could at least sleep and not wake up. 

“Will he be alright?” Mordred’s hand presses against his face, warm against the chill that has enveloped him. Percival cradles him close, squeezing him as if Galahad will slip out of his grasp and vanish. If he were to vanish, though…

“He’ll be alright,” Percival says. “He’s hurt but we’ll just have to take care of him.”

Opening his eyes, Galahad tilts his head up. They both now that it will not be “alright”, because there are wounds that not even bandages or time can heal. There will always be scars lining skin to serve as a reminder that perhaps you weren’t fast or good enough, and that maybe if you’d tried harder you wouldn’t have to look at what marred you and feel a sting to remind you of what you did. Maybe they will bandage him and let him rest but when he wakes up the cloud will linger over his head and it will rain.

“P-Perc—” It takes too much effort to get the words out.

Percival lays him down on a cot, stroking at his hair. His hands are gentle and familiar, tucking away strands of sweat-drenched hair. He’s blurry without the glasses, but Galahad can make out the dark mess of his hair that might have grown longer in his absence.

“Sleep. It’ll hurt less when they clean and heal you.”

Even though he knows he’ll wake up, he still closes his eyes.

There are two Galahads, but only one can be seen through the keyhole. Only one you can catch flashes and brief little glimpses of beneath the outer layers, and it is only if you stay around for long enough that you can begin to peel them back and see what’s there.

He still smiles, still nods his head and speaks kind words to those who happen to come his way. But he’s not deaf to the whispers that surround him. Sticks and stones may break bones, but words break minds and hearts. He tries to tune it out but he can’t help but pick up on the little tuts and murmurs about that poor son of Lancelot who just couldn’t succeed in finding the Grail, and that it’s such a pity really, because he seemed so much a better knight than his father before him and for him to be proven not worthy enough in the eyes of God is such a shame, really.

But he keeps going on because he thinks it will fade and that the voices will go deaf on him without having to go to sleep. And everyone else notices it in the way he’s starting to slip. The pedestal beneath him is starting to crack and crumble and soon enough he will fall.

“You’re a bit off today,” Percival tells him. He wasn’t able to block the blow with his sword and Galahad has to get up off the ground, picking off grass that stains his palms green and the dirt smeared on his clothes.

“And it’s been long enough. Not like what hurt me hasn’t healed already.”

(It hasn’t healed and they both know it all too well. Neither of them know if it will ever heal.)

“Well, just keep trying. You’ll get it eventually.”

“I will.”

That is the root, that is the core of the apple: Too many eventuallys and if-you-try-hard-enough when he already has, and now he’s slipping.

He forces down the phlegm in his throat. There is time that can be better spent on dwelling on those thoughts.

“Galahad, are you—”

“Not right now.” The words come out brittle and he adds in a softer tone, “I can talk about it, but not right now. Not when it’s like this.”

So in the crisp spring air glowing gold with sunset they spar and try again and again and again, but it will never quite go the way it did the first time.

Even after weeks there is still something alien about sleeping in a bed tucked safely away from the prying stars and rustling of trees again. It is foreign having Percival’s arm draped around his body to protect him from the words that can’t reach him here, to be able to hear his own breathing in the silence, to have proper warm blankets covering him, for there to be a candle to snuff out he’s you’ve had enough with hunching over a book pretending he can run away.

He does want to run away, but where can he go to? He remembers the nights he’d talk to Percival about leaving Camelot far behind, but the great after was always a blur. He just imagines somewhere else very far away and while it is just a fuzzy imagining in his mind it’s a soft and bright one. He can’t have those imagines now. He can’t—doesn’t—deserve anything like that.

But the pedestal is crumbling away and maybe he can sleep for a bit and close his eyes to the rest of the world. It’s not as if they’re observing him in the confines of his room, anyways.

“I can’t sleep,” he says to Percival. He sits up and throws the covers off—suddenly they are far too warm on his skin.

“What do you need to go to sleep?” Percival asks him. “I’ll try and see what I can do to help. Do you want to read more? Are you uncomfortable? Does anything hurt?”

He waits for Percival to sit up so he can rest his hands on the curve of his neck and shoulder.

“I want…” Galahad pauses. “I want…”

He’s falling from his pedestal and no longer has to consider being Galahad the pure—how pure must he be to achieve grace in the eyes of God? Not enough, and perhaps he doesn’t have to be. He failed, so at least he can erase everything for a little bit and dream.

“I want you,” he says at last. “I want you to take me.”

“Your vow—you—are you sure? I will, I want you to, but—”

“I’m sure. That vow I took doesn’t matter anymore, since the reason I took it doesn’t mean a thing anymore either.”

“Alright. But if anything ends up hurting you or if you want me to stop, I will. Just tell me, or I can ask.”

When Percival presses him down and kisses him, there is something else. There is something else just beneath the surface, and they tear through whatever layer there is to reach it. He pulls away for a moment when Galahad’s pattern of breathing shifts imperceptibly, and brushes a hand over the jut of his half-exposed collarbone.

“Do you want—“

“Yes. I want this. I want you. I said it before, but since you want me to make it clear I will.”

He thinks Percival is smiling in the dark.

“I want you too,” he says, and then bends down over Galahad again.

With the next morning comes cold. He moves closer to Percival, who pulls him close to ward off the goosebumps that make him shiver. Some of their clothes lie atop the bedsheets, others most likely strewn across the floor. He wakes up remembering what happened last night, and how after everything they lay awake in the dark, sharing words with their kisses in a secret code that they cannot communicate with their voices.

He reaches up a hand to comb through Percival’s dark hair, twirling his fingers through strands of it.

“How was it last night?” Percival mumbles. He shifts a bit.

“I don’t know how to describe it. Strange. Good—I guess—but strange.”

He knows that the weight will come crashing down and then he’ll fall off the pedestal sooner or later, but he’ll still keep on walking towards something he knows he’ll never reach. He knows that there is more beyond this room, that there is a vault of blue sky and a world that he will never get to see because he isn’t worthy of it and never was. And when they finally do get out of bed they will have to take great care to make sure their clothes aren’t too wrinkled and make sure that the marks lining their necks are covered up, and maybe—just maybe—they will count the days it takes the marks to fade and they can repeat it all over again.

“I want to go back to sleep for a bit. I’m tired.”

So he sighs and buries his head in his pillow.

“I know we’ll be late. I know. But I’m so tired.”

“I think we still have time left.”

“Then I’ll rest.” 

So he lets Percival hold him with his bare arms, and rock him back and forth, back and forth, till his eyes slip closed again.

“Has everything been alright, Galahad?”

There is Arthur, the king. He walks with Galahad through the spiraling gardens—he’s known Lancelot ever since he first visited Camelot when the crown weighed too heavy on his head, and knew his son (a son that was never meant to exist) for slightly less longer. The trees are bold green, the flowers practically glow, the sky a deep and faultless blue over their heads with only a few stray clouds along the path.

Galahad nods his head. “I am alright, Your Majesty.”

They do not speak of the Grail. Whether it is because they know or because Arthur does not is unclear.

“If there is anything you need to talk to me about, you can.”  
There are so many things I want to say, Galahad thinks, I want to tell you that you were more of a father to me than he ever was, that I’m worried about failure and that it’s because I have failed. But I can’t say a word of that to you because you already have enough on your mind—you already have Camelot and Guinevere and your other knights and an entire country to oversee, and one person talking about their problems would surely burden you with more. I can’t say a word if it means adding another weight onto you and maybe shifting the balance of your pedestal. I can’t.

“There is nothing I need to talk to you about. I’m alright.” He smiles, but it stings.

“You’re a good man, Galahad. You were a good child growing up who talked about changing the world for the better, and I hope that you’ll continue to aim for that goal now. Don’t overexert yourself, though.” He ruffles Galahad’s hair.

It is then that the sky has never seemed so blue, or the birds chirping seemed so loud, or the world seemed so vast in Galahad’s eyes.

Maybe he won’t sleep.

He talks to Percival, though, because they don’t know.

He talks again and again and again because even though he’s probably repeating himself till he goes blue in the face just saying it once isn’t enough. And Percival talks with him, too, about how it isn’t the same for him anymore either.

“I thought that if I could at least find the Grail I could serve a purpose. What can I do now that I don’t have that purpose? But the worst part is I can’t talk to many people about it because what if I’m burdening or irritating them with problems that may not be as bad? And I certainly can’t talk to my father about it, because whatever dwells in his mind could very well be worse. I just don’t know what to do.”

“I don’t know, either. But we have to keep trying.” Percival swallows and continues.

“I started realizing it when you almost died. The world isn’t as good of a place as it’s supposed to be, and what if we can’t do anything to change it? What if our efforts are fruitless—there’s more to the world than good and evil, and I was stupid not to see it that way. And what if you died again?”

“That won’t happen anytime soon.” He pulls Percival close. “We’ll stay alive for each other. It will hurt, but we will.”

He feels Percival’s embrace press against him. “It will hurt, but we have to keep going.”

He does not expect his father of all people—his real father, who has been encased in a block of ice and strayed off the path long ago because of what had happened to him—to approach him. He does not expect his father to say he’s sorry, either.

“I’m sorry for saying those things to you during the quest. I shouldn’t have.”

Galahad nods a little, but he does not say “I forgive you”. There is more once you peel back the layers. Years of turning his back on a son he never knew about and never really even wanted in the first place, years of purposefully turning his gaze away every time his son glowed a little brighter because that’s where he used to be. There are some things apologies can’t fix.

Once more he nods at—Lancelot? His father? He does not know the right way to refer to this man—and leaves. 

And as he leaves he thinks. He does not have to shine brighter in the hopes that this man will notice and love him for it. He should not have to shine for anyone but himself, really, and he can still do it while looking out for the world. The pedestal has broken and it feels familiar to walk the ground of the earth without something holding him up above it.

“We can see your sister.”

Night has fallen again and the darkness shrouds the marks they have given each other. Night is the time where if he needs it Galahad can forget and not feel anything at all.

“Dindrane? I’ve written letters to her before. Mother helped us communicate when we were young. Got married off, but I think she’d take us in.”

Camelot is stifling them. It chokes them, reminds them that they cannot regain what it is that they lost and cannot chase after what they do not deserve to achieve. Their only relief from it all is with each other, where they are not spitting up lies about how everything is really alright and as it should be to those who pry them about it.

“Let’s hope it’ll be soon.” It’s too much here, Galahad wants to say, I can’t really do much good in a place like this.

“Good night,” Percival says. He wraps his arms around Galahad. “I’ll write to her in the morning and we’ll see what could happen then.”  
Morning will mean more of monotonous routine and walking on and being choked and slowly dying little by little, but perhaps it will not stay that way. He reaches up to press a kiss to Percival’s nose.

“Good night.”

Maybe Arthur does know, because he says that they can still do work out there as knights with Dindrane. He lets them leave and travel on horseback for days and nights and gives back a response to Dindrane stamped in a red ring of wax. And they find his sister and her castle, where she lives and gives them sanctuary once again—her husband is long gone and she has her dogs to keep her company, and her brother and his love, too.

They still go out on their missions from the castle, but it is different without the sun being obscured by a cloud that hangs over their heads. It is different waking up being able to breathe, and not hearing the whispers as they go through the halls. It is different going out across the land without people murmuring about tragedy and shrouding them in their pity.

But at the same time the cloud isn’t quite gone. Some days it is bright and sunny but other days it hangs over their heads, opaque and making the rain drip incessesantly over the both of them. But Galahad knows it will be impossible to live on with cloudless days forever, so they do what they can to hide from the rain. And they stay awake, not deluding themselves with dreams that they’ve lost. They will change the world and do it their way.

They don’t have to play pretend anymore, when they really can wake up side by side. Percival will have to lure Galahad out of bed by dotting kisses all over his nose and cheeks and face till Galahad finally pulls him down and they start laughing softly. And maybe they stay in bed for a few moments longer—but awake and in perception of the world beyond them. But they always have each other to look at before closing their eyes for the night. And they are finally, finally able to say the words that they both desperately need to hear.

“I love you,” Percival says. “I’ve loved you for a long time and I’m so happy to be with you now.”

Galahad says the words he needs to say back, letting Percival rock him gently back and forth in his arms. “I love you too.”  
And for the first time in a while, beneath the purest sky and aside the purest sea, Galahad feels home again.

**Author's Note:**

> I DID IT
> 
> I DID IT
> 
> IT IS 1 AM AND I DID IT
> 
> I'M GOING TO GO TO SLEEP NOW BECAUSE I'M REALLY TIRED
> 
> BUT I DID IT GOOD NIGHT LADIES AND GENTLEMEN AND DISTINGUISHED FOLK THAT AREN'T OF THE GENDER BINARY, PLEASE HAVE A LOVELY DAY OR NIGHT OR WHATEVER
> 
> edit: changed the rating to t bc of the very lightly implied/referenced sex


End file.
